OpenAI delivers another good news: the number of paying users of ChatGPT has exceeded 11 million, showing the remarkable success of OpenAI's commercialization process. According to the technology media theInformation, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap recently stated that these 11 million paid users include 10 million paying subscribers and 1 million high-priced business plan users. Such a large user base has brought OpenAI huge revenue - more than 225 million US dollars per month, and annualized revenue of 2.7 billion US dollars, showing that the market demand for AI-driven tools is still very strong.
If OpenAI's revenue from selling AI models to application developers is included, the company's revenue over the next 12 months is expected to reach about $4 billion, up from about $3.4 billion in annualized revenue in the middle of this year and $1.6 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2023.
Rapid development also comes with high costs. A large user base and continued investment in research and development have caused OpenAI to lose billions of dollars every year. To fill the funding gap, OpenAI plans to change its corporate structure from a non-profit organization to a for-profit model to attract more investment, The Information reported earlier. The company is in talks with investors, including a UAE government-backed fund, aiming to raise up to $7 billion.
This financing is expected to bring OpenAI’s valuation to US$150 billion, almost twice that of Nvidia, the world’s leading artificial intelligence chip design company.
As of now, OpenAI provides ChatGPT with three subscription options: Plus, Team and Pro, meeting the different needs of individual users to large enterprises.
ChatGPTPlus costs $20 per month. This version provides priority access, quick response, and GPT-4 usage rights, but is more basic in performance and functionality than the Pro and Team versions;
ChatGPTTeam is designed for small teams and enterprises, and the specific price is usually based on the size of the team and the services required. The company has said that less than half of OpenAI's enterprise users are based in the United States. Outside the United States, ChatGPT is most popular among business users in Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom;
ChatGPTPro costs $200 per month and offers higher usage limits, faster response times, and additional features.
At the same time, the preview version of the o1 "Strawberry" model, another masterpiece of OpenAI, has also been released, and the AI large model competition has entered a new stage.
The o1 series models will be launched to paying users, free users and developers in stages, and the price for developers is quite expensive:
ChatGPTPlus and Team users have immediate access to o1-preview and o1-mini.
Enterprise and Edu users will gain access next week.
Developers with API usage level 5 (having spent $1,000 and more than 30 days since the first payment) can use both models starting today with a 20RPM rate limit.
OpenAI also plans to open the use of o1-mini to all free users of ChatGPT in the future.
Once upon a time, OpenAI was widely known for its non-commercial origins. However, as AI technology continues to develop, making these models smarter requires more and more complex resources and technology. OpenAI has to gradually turn to commercial operations to support larger-scale hardware investment.